Subject: Re: Windows support

From: Han-Wen Nienhuys <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:56:26 -0700

Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> If that is the case, "Git for Windows" probably should package MSYS as 
>> part of it, I would think, to match the expectation of the users there.  
>> I know two Johannes'es and Han-Wen spent quite a lot of effort on 
>> Windows port and packaging, but perhaps that little (well, I should not 
>> be judging if that is a little or huge, as I do not do Windows) 
>> finishing touch would make Windows users much happier?
> 
> Windows users are only happy when they can bug developers.
> 
> Seriously again, the biggest problem with Han-Wen's installer was that it 
> insists on cross-compiling _all_ the packages.  This makes it easy for 
> Han-Wen to upgrade packages and compile the thing on Linux in one go.  
> However, it never worked with bash, and I could not fix it: I can read 
> Python, but not _that_ Python.
> 

The problem is not really the python. If you supply me with a shell
script that will x-compile bash, I'll hapily code the python spec. IMO
the real problem is that bash is a unix shell (tied to unix internals)
and therefore, compiling it for something as horrid as windows is far
from trivial.

fwiw, I briefly tried compiling msys, but I couldn't even find its
sources, so I quickly gave up.

A second option is that someone supplies me with an unpacked, installed
tree of msys' bash shell. I can easily package that up along with the
rest of the installer, if it doesnt' require further trickery (setting
registry entries, etc.)